


Corona

by orphan_account



Series: Lunar Tides [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Abuse, Battered Person Syndrome, Drug Use, M/M, non-game au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-11-02
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:51:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He...Fixed me." His voice drops to a very small whisper when he continues: "Fixed. Only. Kind words, now. Nice. Nice words."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

You can't remember the last time you talked to Cronus Ampora.

You think, maybe, that you're supposed to be grateful for that. You think, maybe, that most people would point on that he's a chafing, bullying, misanthropic douche with nice guy syndrome, a bulge that won't stay in his trousers, and a head full of shitty lyrics he uses to express this horrible mishmash of boorish traits. You think they'd point out, further, that you're the only one he full out abuses verbally and has actually punched a few times.

You think these are valid points.

But when you see him now, he is thinner than you. Thinner than you, the troll who gets every variety of food shoved in their general direction, both by your matesprit and moirail and all their various hangers on, trolls who would benefit from doing a kindness to the paramour of the higher blooded. He is thin and he is tired and you can see bruises blooming from beneath the cuffs of his uncharacteristic dress shirt. His hair is well greased and styled back, but not as you've ever seen him do it. The lines are unnaturally straight, as though he had not combed it himself, and there is no trademark spit curl to dangle endearingly in his face or curl around his cheekbone softly. 

You think, with all these traits, that you wish you had talked to him more often. You don't know what to say to him.  
Nothing would suffice. Nobody expects you to say anything to him. Not Latula or Kronus or Meulin or Kankri, all of whom are busy talking animatedly amongst themselves. Cronus, himself, doesn't even seem to expect anyone to talk to him. He is, instead, staring dazedly off into space, as he's done since Kankri led him into the party. Meenah had called all of you there, of course, to celebrate some meaningless occasion that she had deemed important enough to spend a fortune on booze and cake (and the last time she had done that, it had been to celebrate learning to varnish her toenails correctly). 

When you touch his arm, he jumps half way out of his scales, large eyes falling onto your hand and trailing up to your face. He doesn't look you in the eye. His arm muscles twitch beneath your hand.  
"Cronus?" you ask, and he looks back up at you, his eyes jerking to the side every few seconds, as if he can't quite command them to stay still.

"Hello." he finally settles on. It is detached and frightened and nothing you have ever known Cronus Ampora to be. He seems afraid at your silence, the muscles in his jaw going stiff as he subconsciously grinds his teeth.  
The bruises aren't from a kismesis then, you decide. When you glance down at his wrist you can see the chafe marks and raw spots from what you think at first might be bracelets, but only realize as he pulls down the cuff of his shirt are probably from shackles.

"Hello." he says again, more stiffly, and you realize that he is not going to say anything else until you ask him to.

"...How are you?" you try, just to test your theory. The way he looks his making your stomach churn, and how long he takes to work out your question is only making the churning go faster.  
"I am." he pauses, as if remembering something. There's a slight twitch in his jaw. "Well. And yourself?"

He is not well. He is not well, not from the way he is standing with his back stiff as a rod, not from the way he seems unable to comprehend genuine answers to the most basic questions.  
"I'm not well." you reply. He does not seem to understand this.

"Who...Has been taking care of you? To make you...Well?"  
His face at least slackens at that, no longer trying to suss out what to say about your announced infirmity. His eyes flick around, though, as if he's afraid to be caught.

"Kankri."

You don't know how to respond to that. You look over at Kankri, at the unassuming five feet nothing of a troll with small limbs and a delicate face.  
You notice his knuckles are bruised and turn your face, open mouthed, back to Cronus.

"How...How has he made you well?"

"He...Fixed me." Cronus says, after a lengthy amount of time. His eyes jerk about again, but now his head follows. He shivers though it's not particularly cold, even for a warm blood like you. His voice drops to a very small whisper when he continues: "Fixed. Only. Kind words, now. Nice. Nice words."

The tremours in his hands become so bad that he clutches them together so as to avoid them. It doesn't work. His fingers keep on shaking, though his knuckles are almost white from how tightly he's holding them.  
You feel a rising sense of horror take a hold of you. In another moment, you might wonder if it were something that would constitute a breach on your relationship with Kurloz. In this moment, you think only of how your former friend might tremble himself to death if you don't find a way to help him. 

"I...Should take you away from him. Where he can't-"  
"No!" He snaps, though his face goes paler when he realizes he's done it. "I meant 'please don't'. I'm. Sorry. I shouldn't have. Snapped."

"You're ill." You tell him, still wide eyed and unbelieving. Surely, there's a deeper story than this.  
Surely, when Kankri had told you all that he was going to take Cronus under his wing, teach him something about pity, surely...He had never meant this.

"Please." He pleads with you quietly, pressing himself back against the wall. You've both been standing on the outskirts of the party for some time now. He's never ventured into the crowd. He shrinks against the stone, though, as if it will-  
...As if it will brace him. If you were to lash out.

"Why?" you ask more softly. The change in tone doesn't seem to relax him. "Why shouldn't I help you when you're hurt?"

He makes a tiny sound as though he's dying.  
Those over-large eyes meet yours and you see the violet in them, you see the contracted pupil and the terror that he's trying to hide.

"Loves me." Cronus whispers. He touches a spot on his neck now covered with the high collar of his shirt. You suppose that was a calculated fashion choice. "He loves me."

"I do." Sighs a voice from behind you. 

It's your turn to tense at a voice you never thought you would. Kankri steps by you gently, surely, and lifts a hand to Cronus's cheek. You can almost see the way he strains his muscles trying to keep from flinching. You see how his eyes turn to the floor and how he twists the ring on his finger set with a bright red stone. You don't miss the way Kankri scratches over Cronus's gills on the way back down before settling on his chest. Possessive. Parting you and Cronus with himself.

"I love him very much, you know." Kankri tells you. You wonder how eyes that seemed so warm two sweeps ago now make you shiver. "That's why I volunteered to help him in the first place."  
He pries open Cronus's hands and you realize that those small limbs may pack muscles more powerful than you had imagined. He frowns at the way Cronus's hand shakes.

"You'll excuse us, Captor. Not that I would want to be upsetting you or triggering you by mentioning it, but Cronus needs to be medicated." His smile is enough to tell you that if you ask about it, he'll force you to watch.  
You shiver and nod mutely and wish you were braver.

Instead, you watch Cronus Ampora follow Kankri in a wobbly daze, eyes still wide and frightened and looking at you, pleadingly, until a door way cuts off your view of him.  
You are Mituna Captor, and you have the terrible feeling you have just witnessed the beginning of something horrible.


	2. Chapter 2

The next time you see him, it's on less than legal terms.

Troll society on Beforus, in general, has lots of legal terms, and you are thinking that you might be breaking a full dozen, if not more, when you use your psionics to break into Kankri's hive. You broke more by distracting his lusus, scattering roe cubes outside his hive and around the forested area near it. But you can't be concerned with breaking laws when you feel that your head has been breaking, itself.

Cronus Ampora became a regular figure in your dreams, even deep down in sopor. The problem was that you ceased seeing him as he was, as the sad, shaking little thing at the party. You ceased seeing his eyes, wide and half focused and pleading with you for some sort of reprieve even though he had, himself, defended the person responsible for it only moments earlier.  
No.  
You _heard_ him.

You heard his voice rise up above the rest of the voices of the soon to be doomed, cresting and rolling out to drown the others like a tidal wave of suffering. You woke up screaming so loudly that a few of the neighbors in your communal hive stem were cautiously milling around your door when you exited. You had shooed them all away, made to call Kurloz in the middle of the day, but... But he had just waved off your concerns. You were used to him not giving rise or panic to your premonitions, but it almost seemed too heartless. You had reminded Kurloz that he was, in theory, supposed to be your friend.

Kurloz had replied, in not so many words, that 'friend' was the same word for 'enemy', in any case.

You had tried, the next day, to tell Latula. While she was, by capacity of your quadrant, pitying of your circumstances, she had only said that Kankri had told them Cronus had been very ill, and since purple bloods healed very slowly, he had tried his best to cover up some of the worse marks of infirmity. She then suggested that if something was troubling you, you should talk to Kurloz.

It was enough to make you blow up her skateboard. And yours.

The only solution that availed itself to you was to fly out to Kankri's hive and hope that, unlike Cronus's, it had not been abandoned. Seeing the magnificent naval ship covered in dust had rattled you to the core for reasons you couldn't explain, and if Kankri's hive was the same, you thought you might actually short circuit and go mad. 

But it had been as it always was: lawn ring cleanly trimmed, walls washed, windows shined. You distracted his lusus and climbed inside one of the windows on the upper floor, and only then when you were positive that Kankri had given chase to his lusus. You had time, you knew- the roe cubes were spread out for some miles and Kankri had told you once- in younger, more pleasant times- that his lusus was impossible to stop once he caught scent of them.

You floated across the areas, too mindful of the clean floors to really want your foot prints on them. Room after room, every one was the same: neat, orderly.  
Cronus-free.

In fact, you had just about started to give up, to wonder if he was gone, when you heard a groan from one of his nutrition platform holders. You tentatively opened the door to find long legs curled in on themselves, a long torso stretched out. You saw long arms stretched up, a bridge of chain that connected two shackles balanced on a shelf hook.  
Somehow, it took you a moment to realize that what you were staring at, all of the discombobulated body parts, equalled one sea troll.

When you open your mouth, nothing comes out. At least, not on the first few tries.

Your eyes are too busy scanning him. Now that Cronus is shirtless, you can see not just the raw, bright purple skin around his wrists, but fresh cuts and vivid bruises around his whole body. He has scratches that trail under his pants that make your stomach churn- partially because Kankri had been so dead set on chastity and partially because there are ten scratch marks and you don't want to contemplate what reason other than sex Kankri would have for putting them there.

By the time you stop making a mental tally of his abuses, you notice he's stirring. He looks up at you and all you can see are how the yellow sclera of his eyes crack with dozens of tiny purple veins, how puffy and purple and painful his eyelids look. He has been crying. The trails of pale violet are still on his face to prove it.  
Yet, he looks at you as though your appearance is the most shocking, unrealistic thing he could imagine.

"...Am I. Dreaming?" he asks you, words stilted on broken lips. 

"I..." you start unintelligently, unsure of what to say. "No. At least, I don't think you are."

"Oh."

It's a soft sound between the two of you. His fingers move and you dimly realize he's trying to get circulation back into them. Kankri hasn't had him strung up for long, but he's clearly done it enough that Cronus is aware, on some level, of how to ease the pain and pressure. They still and he pauses and you almost think he's gone to sleep, until he stirs again and chances looking back up at you.

"You're. Nicer... In my dreams."

It strikes you as an odd thing to say. On a better day, in a happier time, you might've told him that every iteration of him- real or fictional- was unpleasant. But now he looks like he might agree with you if you did, and you're not sure you have the stomach for that.

"Different how?" you ask him, shifting uncomfortably. It's hard to look him in the eye when it gives you sympathy pains.

His eyes go a bit distant and he gets an almost wistful look, rubbing his dry, cracked lips together briefly. One of the breaks opens up at the motion and begins to bleed.  
He doesn't seem to notice.

"You. Shock me." 

"How is that _nice_?"

He smiles again, more widley. Another split opens. It is not an expression he makes often.

"Die." Cronus whispers, "You shock. I die."


	3. Chapter 3

You must make a horrible expression, because he begins to look as though he's just stepped on the toes of a fluff beast, all contrition and shock. It feels like he shouldn't have a right to be shocked.  
"Why would you say that?!" you demand. 

His eyes move away from your face, becoming down cast, and his shoulders slump as much as they're allowed.  
"I'm filthy." he whispers. It's not true, you think, in any sense- despite all of his markings, he's really quite clean. There's no dirt on him, his hair has been freshly washed, his pants are free of any sort of stain. In fact, even the shackles on his wrists shine brightly, beautifully glinting in the dim lighting of the closet. But he makes a strangled little noise in the back of his throat, as though the statement has awakened a dormant nightmare. 

"I'm _diseased_!" he shouts, and it's all you can do not to cover your ears. He has the voice of a real sea dweller when he does that- harsh, overly loud. It makes it hard to argue with him. "He was making me better." 

"Kankri? You think-" There's a moment where you can't say anything at all. Cronus looks up at you as though you've just called on the horrorterrors by name, equal parts reverence and terror. His eyes flit about in that strange, jarring little tick that you observed at the ball, and it's only after he seems to be sure that you're the only one there that he can focus at all. You lower yourself on eye level to him, trying to get him to look at you instead of the floor.

"You think that he's making you better like this?"

Your fingers move to touch his face, the side of his cheek. He shivers and sighs against the movement, as though he's afraid to let himself enjoy it. For fear of what, you don't know.  
"No." he whispers at last, and for a moment you feel relieved. But the moment is fleeting, because he is not denouncing what's happened. "He realized...I. I'm not.... Not fixable."

It weighs on him like so many stones. His chest heaves and his eyes water. He's frightened of what you must see in him. 

"So... Please. Help me." You feel the weight of his head against your hand when he turns it to kiss you right in your palm. He kisses your fingertips and rubs his cheek against you, and you wonder how a royal blood ever learned to be so docile. You wonder how he learned to make someone want to protect him. "I'm... I'm a burden. Please." 

You hear a sigh from behind you.  
"Oh, Cronus."

There's no time to react. Your muscles tense and all you feel is a jabbing sensation in your neck. Desperate, you try to use your psionics against your assailant, but they only crackle softly- more a distraction or a light show than any real threat. For the first time, you find yourself entirely defenseless.

You slump against a pair of legs behind you. Kankri sinks back down to pull what you now see is a needle from your neck. You can make out the overly bright green colour inside of it, and you immediately know why you can't command your body to do anything you want it to. He's injected you with half a syringe of concentrated sopor, the likes of which your muscles can't match.  
The dizzying drug makes it hard to see straight or think, but you can't fall asleep on it. You helplessly watch as Kankri steps over you, effortlessly unhooks Cronus's shackles, and guides him upwards by the neck.

"You know, I was wondering why on earth anyone would have left so many roe cubes laying about." Kankri says, turning Cronus's head this way and that, as if inspecting if your touch has left some sort of stain. "Especially in a straight line. Now, I don't mean to trigger any violent or upsetting emotions by saying this, but, well... I began to get the very distinct feeling that someone may want to distract me from my duties. And, not that I want to flaunt my intellectual privilege, but-"

He looks at you and you feel a drowsy stab of fear run through you.

"I'm much smarter than that."

You can see, even with your vision mussed by the sudden depressant, the red iris of Kankri's eyes practically engulf his pupil as it narrows to a slit. He pulls something out of his modus, a sickle, you think it's called. His knuckles are white around the handle as he steps towards you, but he stops short, arm caught in midair when Cronus cries: "No!"

There's a flicker of changing expressions on Kankri's face as he lowers his sickle back to his side, looking back at the royal blood in his nutrition platform holder and then to you. The expression on his face is clear as day, though you've never seen it on him before: jealousy. Green, narrow eyed, sour mouthed jealousy, as though he's taken Cronus's plea as evidence of something more between the two of you. 

But there's shuffling and Cronus kisses Kankri's cheek and ear and neck and continues down until he's on his knees again, nuzzling against Kankri's knee. He kisses that too, for good measure, and when Kankri slides a hand through his hair, you're sure you can hear a quiet sigh of pleasure escape from the sea troll's mouth. He must be awfully used to jealous moods, because Kankri's dissolves into a soft, pleasant smile. When he lifts Cronus back up again, they kiss.  
You don't miss the possessive way Kankri bites at Cronus's lips, the way his claws sink in to the soft flesh on his neck.

"You're so sweet." Kankri tells him, stroking over his gills. "But you know better than to speak without being spoken to. Especially when it comes to other people's discussions."  
You're not prepared for the way Kankri bashes the sea troll over the head with the handle of his sickle, knocking him to the floor. When Cronus manages to push himself up, there's a fresh gash of violet gushing from his temple. 

"Ssssto. St." Suddenly the jerky stuttering makes sense to you. It's almost impossible to move your tongue correctly with the sopor running through you, and even when you do, you seem to forget what you were saying halfway through. Kankri regards you for a moment, then smiles viciously.  
"Stop? Why, Mituna? This is what has to be done." He walks over to Cronus and kicks him hard enough in the gills that he topples onto his back, hands unable to protect his damaged side. "I realize that negative reinforcement may be triggering, and while I certainly don't wish to trigger you, well..." You earn another acrid smile. "I'm sure you'd just mention your triggers, if you had any."

He kicks Cronus again, ignoring your babbling and garbled noises. He knows you can't talk, but he didn't drug you so that you could stop him.  
He drugged you so you could watch.

"You don't know how much it hurts me to have to do this." He tells Cronus, his voice gentle. The sharp material of his heel catches and nicks Cronus, creating a bruised and broken line of purple on his gills. "Do you know how much I'm sacrificing for you? How much this goes against my vows of peace?"

To your everlasting horror, Cronus kisses Kankri's shoe tip, head bowed, and nods.  
Kankri kicks him in the teeth.

"I didn't think I'd have to remind you that you also need to speak when you are spoken to, Cronus." he remonstrates. Cronus is touching his mouth with the back of his hand, and you can tell by the tears welling up in his eyes that his teeth are very sharp and the kick was none too gentle. When Kankri observes the same, his face almost becomes upset. It's as though Cronus were the one kicking him.

"Do you think I like doing this? Do you think I like that you never learn?" He asks, as though he's really hurt by having to hit Cronus. You can't tell whether it's genuine or just very good acting, but Cronus shakes his head so quickly that you hear his spine pop.  
"No." he says, though it's slightly garbled by the blood gushing out of his mouth. "I'm sorry. I'm. Difficult."

That seems to make Kankri relax a little, his shoulders slouching, hand losing tenseness in it's grip.  
He pets Cronus again, allowing him to kneel. The sea troll kisses Kankri's leg and hip and hands and you think you see, for just a moment, the same softness in Kankri's eyes that you felt in your own.  
He tips his head back and makes a very content expression, and for the first time you notice that Cronus's kisses have moved to a significantly less chaste place on the front of Kankri's pants.

Still bleeding from the mouth, he leaves a messy, bloody trail of purple where he licks and nips and sucks, and yet you see a trail of red run down his chin.  
It's a revelation that your mutant blooded captor has been getting off on all of this, genetic material soaking through his pants.

You suspect, from the way that Kankri tugs on the red collar that decorates Cronus's neck, that this is, again, supposed to be a favour that he's doing for Cronus. A favour for fucking the shackled, beaten, bloodied, starved troll that he hangs by the in small rooms when he's gone. An act of primal, dominating possession he masquerades as an act of benevolent indulgence and consolation.

"I wouldn't do this if I didn't love you, you know." he tells Cronus.  
"I know." Cronus replies, resting his head against Kankri's hip. You have the horrible feeling he really does think that it's all his fault, that he really believes Kankri is acting out of some moving desire to fix him, to sacrifice his own morals in order to cure the supposed illness that runs deep inside of Cronus. You have the horrible feeling he's begun to accept that Kankri's desire to beat and fuck him into submission is really something that could be changed if only he were better, more competent.

It's a great and terrible thing that Kankri Vantas has done, and he's done it without the mental powers of a blue blood.

When he pushes Cronus back onto the floor, he falls like a wriggler's play thing, limp and unresistant. It's really all the invitation Kankri seems to need before he's shucking Cronus's pants. The denim crumples next to you and you realize that Kankri has positioned himself and Cronus specifically so that you can see every bloody, genetic material drenched bit. 

At this angle you can see that there are entire sections of Cronus's thighs and hips where the skin has been peeled away. There are scars and cuts and bruises in the shapes of fingers, and it's all you can do to resist vomiting when you see the puncture wounds in his bulge. The marks are too tiny for claws, and from the crescent shape, you know that the Kankri has bitten down on it before. Recently.

You don't get the full view until Kankri leans forward and kisses him roughly. Just like that, Cronus's body seems to turn itself on, going from pale with pain to flushed with arousal. You wonder, offhandedly, how many bruises it took for him to respond so automatically. 

Of course, maybe you're just wondering that because your mind is finally breaking. After all, you don't want to dwell on Kankri removing his own clothes, on the way his bulge is dripping bright red but not slick enough to go into Cronus without him whimpering. You don't want to see the way that makes Kankri hiss and sink the tip of his sickle into one of Cronus's gill slits, scratching another deep mark into the tender, swollen flesh there.

But you do see. And you also see the way Kankri holds one of Cronus's legs to him, using it as an anchor to bring Cronus's body back to him as he presses himself in and out, occasionally growling and biting into the swell of skin just on either side of Cronus's knee.  
For his part, Cronus looks at you, eyes glassy and half lidded. He makes sounds that are somewhere caught in between pain and pleasure, in between horror and serenity. You think back to his request, back to his plea for you to kill him, and you find disgust with yourself. For reasons you can't fully comprehend, you feel as though your failure to act is what brought this on you both. But there's nothing in his expression that judges you; nothing in his eyes that accuse. 

Cronus does nothing but lay back, prone and still and moaning softly. His body must be used to coming with Kankri's, because when Kankri begins to press harder, faster into Cronus's nook, the sea troll's breaths grow short and he lets out sounds that, despite all circumstances, send a rush of blood to your half-numb bulge. 

When they come they come together, Kankri growling into Cronus's thigh and Cronus trilling and screaming Kankri's praises, his voice echoing off all of the stone in the hive.

You make out the fact that Kankri's genetic material is dripping from Cronus's nook. It's so debauched, so utterly alien to you, that you can't, for the life of you, pull your eyes away. Certainly not in time for Kankri to look up at you, follow your gaze, and smile in a lazy, sharp way to himself.  
He tugs at Cronus's leash, forcing the sea troll onto wobbling legs, and walks towards you. You don't understand what he's doing until he walks around the back of you; until he leads you up by the jaw the same way he did with Cronus. You find yourself kneeling, face to face with the sea troll's nook. 

It's a messy mix of blood and genetic material, red and purple, strong smelling in a way that you think should be unpleasant, but that really makes you feel that same, sleepy throb in your pants.  
Kankri squeezes your jaw with his fingers, pushing your head a bit forward.

"Well?" he asks, voice even. "Clean him up."


	4. Chapter 4

You almost can't process the request at first.

Your tongue is, after all, almost dead in your mouth. You can barely move your lips to form coherent words. And yet.   
And yet, when Kankri pushes your head forward, your lips and nose are covered in the slurry of genetic material and you make the mistake of inhaling again.

When you do, the scent is even more powerful and, for some reason totally beyond your comprehension, you decide that swallowing some of what's making that scent would be an even better idea. It is with this in mind that you lift your head forward, right up to the swollen lips of his nook and half kiss it, swallowing the blood and genetic material that gets into your mouth.   
It burns through you for some reason you also can't explain, making you feel more hot and bothered. Your thoughts become muddled, desire mixing with the shame and horror of everything you've just witnessed. You continue to kiss him and drink, fluids running down your jaw and neck, pushing your head up further and further as the stream becomes less steady. 

You don't know why, but you're filled with a need for more. It completely consumes your thoughts, until you're fighting with your tongue to lift itself up into Cronus's nook.  
When you lick into the crevice for the first time, Cronus shivers and sighs and sets his hands on your head lightly, rubbing around your horns in a way that makes you keen with pleasure.

Behind you, you feel Kankri move. 

Instead of hurting you, he bends down below you and puts his over-warm hands onto your chest, rubbing at your skin through the material of your body suit. He unzips it in the back and then his hands are touching you, actually touching your skin, and the sensation seems so intense that your hands flail and fall against Cronus's thighs, gripping onto them for support.  
You don't know if it's the sopor or the slurry that's setting your nerves on fire, but Kankri's hands are only stoking the effects. He squeezes your nipples and grazes his teeth on your neck and you almost come right there and then. But he moves on, talking to you. "No, no, use your tongue." or "Shhh...You're doing so _well_ , Mituna."

It's just as you've finally begun to really lap into Cronus's nook, making him make those odd, wonderful trilling noises again, that Kankri places his hand on your bulge. You almost can't stand it, but Kankri tugs on Cronus's leash and there he is, kissing you. Your tongue meets his and you coat his mouth in the same genetic material that's coating his nook. Kankri reaches out and taps on his knee, and suddenly he's moving onto you.

He positions himself on your lap, just under where Kankri's hand makes a conspicuous bulge under the material of your suit and proceeds to straddle your thighs with his. He engages you in another sloppy kiss, hands still working at the bases of your horns, and rocks his hips forward. Kankri moves his fingers around the side and top of your bulge so that the under side can meet Cronus's nook, so that you can feel the wetness of it.

It doesn't take very long at all before you find you're the one screaming their names, head tipped back on Kankri's shoulder, letting him bite and suck at your lips.

He lets you lay like that for a few moments until he gets up. Cronus is quick to follow, but Kankri waves him off with a hand.  
"You two get reacquainted." he says. Despite everything that has just transpired, his tone is completely calm and cordial. Sweet, even. You feel Cronus lay back down against you.  
He hooks his shackles around you and kisses you more, giving your tired tongue and pleasure drunken body a rest.

When Kankri comes back, he is holding a shiny metal box, which he sets down on the floor. He sits then, too, and removes capped vials and syringes. You watch with glazed eyes at the almost ritualistic way he measures out precise amounts, taps out bubbles, and polishes the two syringes with antibacterial cloths.

"Sit up." he tells Cronus and, although it's an order, his voice is very warm. 

Cronus unhooks his shackles from behind your head and extends his arms towards Kankri, but there's no tenseness to his movements. You guess this dose of sopor must be a regular thing. An escape. A treat.  
Kankri disinfects the middle of his arm, expertly slides the needle beneath his skin. He's not even done administering the shot before Cronus's eyelids are drooping. 

After making certain that Cronus is laid out safely on the floor, Kankri walks over to you.   
Whether it's because you're not trained like Cronus is or because he knows that your nerves are completely shot, he doesn't command you to sit up.

He sits down beside you and disinfects your arm. The needle doesn't hurt when it slides in, which you suspect may be from the previous sopor.  
But he strokes your hair with his free hand anyway. He smiles at you and you, for another reason beyond your comprehension, smile back.

The dark sleep that you slip into is a wonderful place. 

It is a place filled with mermaids in crystal glens that sing songs mimicking Cronus's trills and screams of pleasure. It is a place where you feel Kankri's hands touching you softly, harshly. Knives and claws cut you, and yet you only bleed sopor. It is a place where someone kisses you and you feel as warm as love itself.

When you wake from it, you do it blinking.  
You can make out the smooth, white sides of a porcelain ablution trap. The water that surrounds you is not crystalline, but it is warm and vaguely smells like flowers. Looking to the side, you can see Cronus, wrapped in a large, fluffy towel and sat up against the side of the ablution room wall with big, fluffy cushions. 

A pair of hands wash your face softly. You blink and look up and feel a kiss placed on your forehead.

"Did you sleep well?" Kankri asks softly.   
You nod and he frowns. You remember to talk.  
"Yes."  
The frown smoothes to a smile.   
"Good. Good." 

He combs through your wet hair with his fingers, softly massaging the bases of your horns. It's a comforting gesture, one that makes you melt against the lip of the ablution trap.   
Kankri kisses you again, just as softly.

"You know something, Mituna?" he asks, finger stroking your jawline.

"What?"  
He smiles again, eyes bright.

"I think I could fix you."

**Author's Note:**

> This will only have a few chapters.  
> I've seen a few pictures where Kankri is giving drugs to a battered Cronus or keeping him on a leash. This is inspired by those.


End file.
